Digsby
by tns
I have pretty much been a fan of Trillian since day one of its release. It’s plugin feature makes it extremely versatile and powerful. However in the past couple of years or so, it’s pretty much been the same ever since; not many new additions have been made. Trillian’s plugin and skin community also seem to have ventured elsewhere as new refreshing things rarely spring up. I always thought Trillian to be the Adium for Windows users but alas someone else has taken the duties of becoming the Adium for Windows and its Digsby (www.digsby.com). It has plugin features but by default handles several chat protocols (aim,msn,yahoo,google talk,icq,etc.) as well as check your email (pop,imap,google,etc) and will link to your favorite social networking sites (myspace,facebook,etc). The skinning system seems pretty simplistic but thorough; using a system based off of CSS. It also has customizable and theme-able conversation windows like Adium; this too is powered through CSS and html based templates.
Oh yeah, it is free too. Trillian had never been free which always bothered me. I guess the only complaint I have with it is font control with some aspects of the program. It locks up on the Buddy List window in Preferences mainly because it loads the fonts in a stupid manner. It seems to also have trouble working with dual monitors (or multiple) from time to time when docking/undocking. It also currently never remembers which monitor it was previously on when it loads up, but no big deal.